Latest Articles

Russian speakers in Ukraine are part of the "Russian World", according to Vladimir Putin's divisive attempts to legitimize Russian intervention there. But given that every third Ukrainian speaks Russian, what is the real significance of language in everyday life in Ukraine?
[ more ]

My Eurozine

Stranger than fiction?

As part of a special issue of "Host" on attitudes to murder in real-life and literary contexts, the American writer David Nemec reveals a sub-plot to a notorious unsolved murder case in which real life remains stubbornly resistant to fiction.

Weeks away from graduating from Ohio State, there I was in Peter Taylor's office. Winner of the previous year's prestigious O'Henry Award, he still, after two terms in his fiction-writing class, inspired so much awe in me that I could scarcely believe the wondrous things he was saying about my latest short story. But my greatest challenge lay ahead, he said. Like all novice writers, I had to find the type of ore – the material – that I wanted foremost to mine.

I already knew. The world renowned Sheppard Murder Case – the inspiration for both a popular long-running TV series and a film called The Fugitive – had happened right in my hometown of Bay Village, Ohio, on 4 July 1954, shortly after my sophomore year in high school. Not only did I know all the principals, but Dr Sam Sheppard had been my physician and in the years since I'd grown morally certain that he'd been convicted of his wife Marilyn's slaying not on hard evidence but primarily because the muck-raking Cleveland Press had crusaded for his arrest almost as soon as the murder occurred and had then crucified him at his trial. (Indeed, the Sheppard Case became a legal landmark in that it permanently altered how the media are permitted to describe murder suspects.)

In addition, two classmates of mine had babysat regularly for the Sheppards' son, Sam Jr. and could provide anecdotes of how the couple interacted. At Sheppard's trial his relationship with his wife had been painted as troubled. Their difficulties multiplied after Susan Hayes, a former nurse at the hospital he and his two brothers co-owned in Bay Village, vindictively testified that she'd had a torrid affair with him and that he'd fallaciously promised to leave his wife and marry her.

Yet another bonanza was that the Bay Village mayor, and not the police, had been the first person Sheppard called after his wife was slain by an unknown person he initially depicted as a "bushy haired intruder". When Sheppard finally spoke to the police, he recounted that on the eve of 4 July he had fallen asleep on a downstairs couch following a long day of surgery and been awakened during the night by scuffling sounds coming from the upstairs master bedroom, where his wife was sleeping. After racing to investigate, he saw a shadowy figure bludgeoning his wife with an object of some sort and was flattened when he tried to rescue her. Upon regaining consciousness and ascertaining that his wife was dead, through a window he saw his assailant trotting along the Lake Erie beach fronting his house and went in his pursuit. The two then fought again on the beach, and Sheppard was left semiconscious at the water's edge with a severe neck injury.

Sheppard's story of the murder along with his initial call to the mayor rather than the police seemed so implausible that from the outset the Cleveland Press launched an outcry that the neck injury was fraudulent, a massive cover-up was being engineered by the Sheppard family, and only Sheppard's privileged professional and social status protected him from being arrested. Recognizing he was out of his element, the small-town Bay Village police chief called on the Cleveland police for help, but by the time they arrived the murder scene was hopelessly compromised. The murder weapon was never found, nor was it ever established what it was. There were fingerprints and footprints galore, but none of them, in key locations, belonged to Sheppard. Not until years after his conviction for his wife's murder did it surface how much vital information the police had concealed from his defence team. A third blood type belonging neither to Sam or Marilyn was found amid the spatters on the wall of the murder room; judging from the angles of the blows Marilyn received the killer was probably left-handed (Sheppard was right-handed); it had taken so many whacks to kill Marilyn that evidently her slayer was not particularly strong, may have used a weapon as insubstantial as a candlestick or an automobile hood ornament and could have been a woman.

Yet the athletic Sheppard testified the killer had been powerful enough to subdue him not once but twice during the savagery of the murder night.

I had theories to account for the maze of contradictory and missing pieces in the Sheppard Case. But I quickly realized that while I had pages of notes for my prospective novel, I lacked a key ingredient when I began writing it after finishing college. Who was going to tell my story? Robert Penn Warren solved that problem in All the King's Men by creating Jack Burden, a sort of ever-present bystander to Warren's fictional version of the rise and fall of Louisiana Governor Huey Long, but I lacked the wherewithal at age 21 to mold a character with Burden's worldliness to serve as my voice. Eventually my frustration over my inability to make any headway on my driving ambition, led me to examine why, apart from the fact that it had happened so close to home, I'd become so fixated on the Sheppard Case in the first place.

When I shelved my desire to write The Great American Novel and returned to the arena where I'd achieved my only success thus far – writing short stories – I was disconcerted to discover that I wasn't fixated on the Sheppard Case. My brain appeared to be fixated on murder itself. My first published story dwelled on a shy young man who discovers after accidentally strangling his girlfriend that he's a closet necrophiliac. Soon afterward I wrote a prize-winning novella about a fight on a produce loading dock that ended in the death of one of the combatants under circumstances that from the narrator's point of view pointed to murder. When my next story threatened to expand into the study of a boy who becomes a serial killer of young girls by the time he reaches adolescence, I could no longer avoid some long nights of introspection.

What was it, anyway, that unremittingly turned my creative juices to murder? Sure, I could recall that the first story I ever read that really resonated in me was the Sherlock Holmes novella, A Study in Scarlet and I'd always had a penchant for detective magazines and true crime books. Further, I had no doubt been influenced by the bizarre events in my own immediate neighbourhood during my childhood. The woman who had been found asphyxiated in her garage with the motor of her Studebaker running and a half eaten plate of fried chicken in her lap. The president of the Bay Village Women's Club whose car had mysteriously stalled on a railroad track while she was driving another woman club member home, promoting speculation that the two were having an affair and had made a suicide pact. The brother of one of my friends who died of a broken neck while playing tag in a house under construction directly across the street from me when he fell (or was pushed by another boy according to rumour) through a gap in the skeletal second story.

And of course I could still name all the bullies and teachers I had fantasized killing as far back as kindergarten.

Meanwhile Sam Sheppard was back in the limelight. In 1966, after serving over ten years in prison, he earned a new trial at which he'd been found not guilty. But any hopes of resurrecting my novel about his case were dashed by the fact that Sheppard's lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, had sworn in his opening remarks that the trial would reveal Marilyn Sheppard's real killer and the County Coroner, Sam Gerber, likewise swore he'd produce a facsimile of the murder weapon. But neither had delivered on his promise, leaving all still mystified how and by whose hand Marilyn Sheppard had been slain. Older now, and wiser about my own limitations, I realized that the story had become too complex, riddled with too many unknowables for me to convert into a novel. I toyed with writing a true crime book, but that too had pitfalls. For one, during the years while Sheppard was in prison the mayor of Bay Village and his wife had both become prime suspects after tales circulated that the mayor's wife had discovered he'd been having an affair with Marilyn. To use their real names when their involvement was only conjecture invited a law suit, and to change not only their names but others as well to protect the innocent would, I felt, eviscerate the book.

So I continued to churn out stories while I worked at a string of jobs to support myself – a vocational training counsellor, then a middle school guidance counsellor and finally a New York State Parole Officer. The summer after I'd been appointed a Senior Parole Officer and the job had begun to seem as if it might become, by default, a career, I received a fellowship to Yaddo, the queen of artists' and writers' colonies. During my six weeks there I devoted myself into overcoming my largest weakness as a novelist: creating and sustaining a plot. Harking back to the nights I spent devouring Sherlock Holmes, I opted to tackle a who-dun-it that I tentatively titled Bright Lights, Dark Rooms.

Alas, my momentum dissolved once I was back at my Parole job with little time to write. But then one afternoon my agent called to say that MacMillan had bought a baseball quiz book I'd written several years earlier on a lark without ever really expecting to sell it.

I took the meagre 3,000 dollar advance I was given as the impetus to quit my job and head for California. It was crazy. I knew almost no one there. But nothing could dampen my exhilaration when I rented a furnished cottage near a wood in Marin County and sat for the first time behind what for the next nine months would be my desk: a ping pong table, net and all. On that table I hammered out the rest of Bright Lights, Dark Rooms, which became my first published novel. Three years later I followed it with my second novel Mad Blood, another who-dun-it centring on my experiences as a parole officer. But now that I'd finally mastered plotting a novel, I sensed my gift wasn't unraveling murders but exploring the psychology of those drawn to commit them. My third novel, The Systems of M.R. Shurnas, featured a tennis teaching pro so unaware that his world has gone awry that he becomes enmeshed in a chain of events that are repeated over and over again, each seemingly ending in the murder of the same woman. Ever since, my protagonists have been marginal figures, often men driven to murder in their quest to find unconventional systems to survive in what to them is an alien and hostile universe.

Yet I'm still haunted by reminders that I never mined my original mother lode when it was still pure gold. The harshest came several years ago. While living in San Francisco, a high school classmate of mine, who also lived there, was murdered just as he was about to testify in a fraudulent bankruptcy case. Two veteran homicide detectives questioned me after finding a message from me on his voice mail. When I mentioned that both he and I had been tangentially involved in the Sheppard Murder Case, the pair exchanged blank looks. "The who?" I literally felt my blood curdle.

Published 2013-04-24

Original in English
First published in Host 3/2013 (Czech version); Eurozine (English version)

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, questions of inequality and solidarity have become intertwined. Over the past year, however, questions of solidarity have also been central in connection to the treatment of refugees and migrants. [more]

In the two decades after the end of the Cold War, intellectual interaction between Russia and Europe has intensified. It has not, however, prompted a common conversation. The focal point "Russia in global dialogue" seeks to fuel debate on democracy, society and the legacy of empire. [more]

Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. Two years after the country's uprising, the focal point "Ukraine in European dialogue" takes stock. [more]

Across Europe, citizens are engaging in new forms of cultural cooperation while developing alternative and participatory democratic practices. The commons is where cultural and social activists meet a broader public to create new ways of living together. [more]

To coincide with the awarding of the 2016 Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing, Eurozine publishes essays by authors nominated for the prize, including by a representative selection of Eurozine partner journals. [more]

The Snowden leaks and the ensuing NSA scandal made the whole world debate privacy and data protection. Now the discussion has entered a new phase - and it's all about policy. A focal point on the politics of privacy: claiming a European value. [more]

The fate of migrants attempting to enter Fortress Europe has triggered a new European debate on laws, borders and human rights. A focal point featuring reportage alongside articles on policy and memory. With contributions by Fabrizio Gatti, Seyla Benhabib and Alessandro Leogrande. [more]

At a time when the global pull of democracy has never been stronger, the crisis of democracy has become acute. Eurozine has collected articles that make the problems of democracy so tangible that one starts to wonder if it has a future at all, as well as those that return to the very basis of the principle of democracy. [more]

Brought on by the global economic recession, the eurocrisis has been exacerbated by serious faults built into the monetary union. Contributors discuss whether the EU is not only broke, but also broken -- and if so, whether Europe's leaders are up to the task of fixing it. [more]

In recent years, Hungary has been a constant concern for anyone interested in European politics. We have collected articles published in Eurozine on recent developments in Hungary and broader issues relating to Hungarian politics, history and culture. [more]

The public sphere is not something given; it is made - over and over again. But which actors are involved and what roles do they play? Is there a difference between an intellectual and an expert? And in which media or public space does the debate take place? [more]

Harbour cities develop distinct modes of being that not only reflect different cultural traditions and political and social self-conceptions, but also contain economic potential and communicate how they see themselves as part of the larger structure that is "Europe". [more]

Broadening the question of a common European narrative beyond the East-West divide. How are contested interpretations of historical and recent events activated in the present, uniting and dividing European societies? [more]

Media change is about more than just the "newspaper crisis" and the iPad: property law, privacy, free speech and the functioning of the public sphere are all affected. On a field experiencing profound and constant transformation. [more]

Despite the Internet's growing significance as vehicle of freedom of expression, public service broadcasting and the press will remain for some time the visible face of the watchdog on power. In western Europe, the traditional media need to prove they are still capable of performing this role. [more]

Eurozine emerged from an informal network dating back to 1983. Since then, European cultural magazines have met annually in European cities to exchange ideas and experiences. Around 100 journals from almost every European country are now regularly involved in these meetings.

The Eurozine conference 2016 in Gdańsk will frame the general topic of
solidarity with a focus on mobilizing for the commons. The conference will take place in the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk thus linking contemporary debates to the history of a broad, non-violent, anti-communist social movement which has started in the city's shipyard in 1980. [more]

Under the heading "Making a difference. Opinion, debate and activism in the public sphere", the 2013 Eurozine conference in Oslo focused on cultural and intellectual debate and the production of the public sphere. [more]

Harbour cities as places of movement, of immigration and emigration, inclusion and exclusion, develop distinct modes of being that communicate how they see themselves as part of the structure that is "Europe". The 2012 Eurozine conference explored how European societies deal variously with the cultural legacy of the "harbour city".[ more ]

The Eurozine conference on "Changing Media - Media in Change" from 13-16 May 2011 brought fresh insights to debates on the future of journalism, intellectual property and free speech, and made one thing very clear: independent cultural journals are where reflexion and criticality combine with changing media strategies.[ more ]

How do migration and institutional mistrust relate to one another? As a new wave of populism feeds on and promotes fears of migration, aggrandising itself through the distrust it sows, The Red House hosts a timely debate with a view to untangling the key issues. [more]

This summer, Time to Talk partner Free Word, London hosted a debate on the role that literature houses play in preserving freedom of expression both in Europe and globally. Should everyone get a place on the podium? Also those representing the political extremes? [more]

On 10 April, De Balie and the ECF jointly organized a public debate in Amsterdam entitled "In the EU we (mis)trust: On the road to the EU elections". Some of the questions raised: Which challenges does Europe face today? Which strategic choices need to be made? [more]

What do young Brits think about state surveillance, privacy and the choices we all make about sharing our personal data online? Is privacy achievable in lives lived so much online and what measures can, and do, we undertake to protect our information? [more]

Depo looks at Turkey's security politics, taking in their origin, consolidation and present development: how much do people trust their institutions and what impact do these levels of trust have upon how confident people in Turkey feel in their everyday lives? [more]

Decades after first encountering Anglo-Saxon perspectives on democracy in occupied postwar Germany, Jürgen Habermas still stands by his commitment to a critical social theory that advances the cause of human emancipation. This follows a lifetime of philosophical dialogue. [more]

The history of Ukraine has revealed the turning points in the history of Europe. Prior to Ukraine's presidential elections in May 2014, Timothy Snyder argued cogently as to why Ukraine has no future without Europe; and why Europe too has no future without Ukraine. [more]

As the culture and institutions of the Gutenberg Galaxy wane, Felix Stalder looks to commons, assemblies, swarms and weak networks as a basis for remaking society in a more inclusive and diverse way. The aim being to expand autonomy and solidarity at the same time. [more]

Earlier civil disobedients hinted at our increasingly global condition. Snowden takes it as a given. But, writes William E. Scheuerman, in lieu of an independent global legal system in which Snowden could defend his legal claims, the Obama administration should treat him with clemency. [more]

Freedom has been the most important motif of accounts of human history since the Enlightenment. Yet, only with the planetary crisis of climate change is an awareness now emerging of the geological agency human beings gained through processes linked to their acquisition of freedom. [more]

Commemorative causality, the confusion between present resonance and past power, denies history its proper subject, writes Timothy Snyder. What is easiest to represent becomes what it is easiest to argue and, in lieu of serious explanations, only emotional reflexes remain. [more]

Social segregation, cultural appropriation: the six-hundred-year history of the European Roma, as recorded in literature and art, represents the underside of the European subject's self-invention as agent of civilizing progress in the world, writes Klaus-Michael Bogdal. [more]

To write is to write one's way through the preconceived and into the world on the other side, to see the world as children can, as fantastic or terrifying, but always rich and wide-open. Karl Ove Knausgård on creating literature. [more]

Jonathan Bousfield talks to three award-winning novelists who spent their formative years in a Central Europe that Milan Kundera once described as the kidnapped West. It transpires that small nations may still be the bearers of important truths. [more]

Our language is our literary destiny, writes Olga Tokarczuk. And "minority" languages provide a special kind of sanctuary too, inaccessible to the rest of the world. But, there again, language is at its most powerful when it reaches beyond itself and starts to create an alternative world. [more]

The recent publication of the private diary of Witold Gombrowicz provides unparalleled insight into the life of one of Poland's great twentieth-century novelists and dramatists. But this is not literature. Instead: here he is, completely naked. [more]

He pointed a way for American fiction out of the doldrums of postmodernism, writes George Blecher. For a culture troubled by the corrosive commercial media and closed-end systems underpinned by technology, David Foster Wallace's influence remains a force to be reckoned with. [more]

It is high time to lift the aesthetic state of emergency that has surrounded witness literature for so long, writes Steve Sem-Sandberg. It is not important who writes, nor even what their motives are. What counts is the "literary efficiency". [more]

Nationalism in Belgium might be different from nationalism in Ukraine, but if we want to understand the current European crisis and how to overcome it we need to take both into account. The debate series "Europe talks to Europe" is an attempt to turn European intellectual debate into a two-way street. [more]

Democratic deficit, enlargement fatigue and ever more rescue funds: is there still a future for a common Europe? Therese Kaufmann, Ivan Krastev, Claus Offe, Sonja Puntscher-Riekmann, Martin M. Simecka diagnose causes for the current malaise of the EU. [more]

Perceived loss of sovereignty and rising hostility towards migrants are behind the nationalist revival in many EU member states. Yet in the countries of the former USSR, nationalism is associated with democratization. Andriy Shevchenko and David Van Reybrouck discuss whether talking about contemporary nationalism in East and West in the same terms is possible at all. [more]

The surge in "anti-politics" throughout Europe coincides with media marketization and the rise of digital technologies. Ivaylo Ditchev and Judith Vidal-Hall analyse media change and the loss of trust in political institutions. What happens to democracy when political decision-making relies increasingly on the opinion poll? [more]

Multiculturalism, the default strategy in western Europe for managing cultural diversity, is increasingly under attack from both Right and Left. If multiculturalism has reached its limits, what are the alternatives that can help manage diversity, both in the East and in the West? Kenan Malik and Fero Sebej in debate. [more]

While an historical-materialist approach to both culture and society has strong critical potential in western Europe, many eastern European intellectuals regard it sceptically. Jiri Pehe and Benedict Seymour ask whether Marxism - or even leftist politics - means one thing in the West and another in the East. [more]

The aggressive monetary policies of western financial institutions were a major factor for the crisis of eastern economies after the speculative bubble burst in 2008. Robert Misik and Daniel Daianu debate the ethical and political implications of western investment in eastern Europe and the globalized economy as a whole. [more]

In many European countries, a nationally framed approach to history clashes with those of neighbouring states. Danuta Glondys and Arne Ruth discuss the role of intellectuals in disputes over contested history and ask whether cross-border journalism can build an element of real universality into the European project. [more]

Martin M. Simecka and Laszlo Rajk, both sons of well-known persecuted communists, discuss the still unanswered questions surrounding the involvement of their fathers' generation in post-war communism, and the failings of today's debate about the past in the former communist countries. [more]